The Pokémon Fad
by ChocolateTeapot
Summary: In which technological advance leads to Pokémon – or approximations thereof anyway. Perspectives on the Pokémania that swept a University base. Three vignettes.


**Author's note: The focus of this crossover is on the Alpha Centauri canon. Also, this story includes some drug use, so be warned.**

"And this is a gift from the citizens of Pavlov Biolab for our most esteemed Provost." Governor Soyinka had finally finished her speech. On cue, an aide holding a rat stepped forward.

It wasn't that Zakharov hated politics, quite the opposite. Politics allowed society to function, and without a functioning society, highly social and organised activities like research were impossible. But he wanted politics to be task-oriented. Protracted, formal and functionless speeches were terribly boring. Flattery only helped if it was successful. He knew Soyinka could do better, he admired some of her lectures on Bio-Engineering. Well, perhaps he could make this a little more interesting. "I am honoured and actually quite surprised." He paused for effect. "Particularly about the 'esteemed Provost' part. I was under the impression that the drone riots were pretty serious."

The rat-carrier froze mid-step and mouthed something that was probably, "live vidfeed."

"Everything is actually under control," Soyinka quickly said. She was right, at the moment everything was acceptable. But he'd been using past tense.

"There's no need to look shocked, I presume you were already aware that the riots were a problem? And I know we're live. It's the norm for this kind of event." Hopefully, he had made it clear how little he had enjoyed listening to the speech as well as his annoyance that the drone riots had been allowed to get out of hand. Mass protests were all part of vibrant University life, but smashing laboratories was unacceptable.

Zakharov stepped forward and took the rat. The aide quickly walked back, clearly eager to get out of the spotlight.

Holding the rat carefully, Zakharov started stroking it between the ears. Gifts were of course an attempt to create a feeling of obligation. Everyone in politics knew that, which somewhat cancelled the effect, but that didn't stop tokens changing hands. After all, what remained was statistically significant.

However, given the number of drone riots, he'd have thought that all University officials would have realised that looking after living things was difficult. This should have made them rethink whether animals made good surprise gifts. At least rats were easier than people.

Zakharov took a closer look at the one he was holding. It was quite large and seemed like a fairly healthy specimen, although he couldn't check behavioural traits due to it being sedated. One slightly worrying thing was that its incisors seemed a bit on the long side. The most noticeable aspect was the colouring. Squinting under his glasses, he could see that while its underside was a natural enough white, its back and tail were purple.

This was not a particularly difficult result to achieve with genetic engineering. And Pokémon was the latest craze, so it was no surprise that someone would try to recreate the creatures in the real world. Zakharov hoped that their martial nature wasn't included as well. Checking the rat's tag brought reassurance. It was based on a docile strain and behavioural traits were not affected.

Come to think of it, he wasn't displeased by the gift. He liked rats, even unexpected purple ones. It would probably fit in well with his other rats after an acclimation period. Zakharov wondered if it had been made specially for him or if he was receiving a lab project that had seemed like a cool idea at the time. It didn't matter.

Then he received Governor Soyinka's message. "Would appreciate you saying something. Pause starting to look awkward. Something sensible please, don't need more drone riots."

"Will," he replied. Networked neural implants made communicating privately while in public so much easier.

Zakharov ran quick a memesearch to make sure he got the name right. The six milliseconds weren't going to matter and he could just imagine people mentioning that he had got it wrong for decades. After checking, he held up the rat and said, "All the same, I really appreciate this gift. This is a lovely Rattata. I'll take the opportunity to remind everyone that Pokémon won't become a major element in our military forces in the foreseeable future." There was no need to say that, it was blindingly obvious. It wasn't even funny.

Governor Soyinka smiled though. This was clearly more along the lines of what she wanted broadcast.

After all, the drone riots had subsided because Pokémania had gripped Pavlov Biolab. In fact, so many people were aspiring to become a "Pokémon Master" in the virtual world that the base felt quite deserted. Zakharov would have preferred it if the drones, or even many of the fairly satisfied citizens, had developed a similar enthusiasm for science and learning. Still, he couldn't deny that having salvaged the part of the Unity cultural database where 1 MB had been allocated for a Pokémon Gold ROM file was proving very useful indeed. The hard work of the archivists and programmers who had decided it would be interesting to update the game to modern standards was of course even more important. And it was extremely fortunate that Pokémon Golden Skies had been ready for release at exactly the right moment. Even the fully immersive remake would only hold the public's attention for a few weeks, but that would give them time to prepare proper psych intervention.

And Zakharov was considering at least creating the appearance of having done something by replacing a large percentage of the administration. He felt that they were better at research than government anyway. Actually, so was he and research was definitely the more enjoyable of the two. But the University needed his vision, even if it wasn't always properly appreciated.

oOo

Katt brushed in another line of code. It wasn't anything spectacular, but what the hell, she was on holiday. She switched to a virtual machine and let the program run. It finally seemed to work as intended.

"Hey, it's Porygon!"

Katt looked up. Her habmate Electra was standing there, the vanguard for a whole gaggle of aspiring information scientists. All of them were giving the distinct impression of wanting something.

"Yeah, Porygon. I expect you'll be seeing a lot more of that one in the near future." Katt switched away from her project. It was better if they didn't spend too much time pondering that statement, although leaving clues was all part of the fun. It was why she was using one of the realest names she had. "But I doubt you're here to talk Pokémon."

Electra shook her head. "Wish we were. Uhm... Were you at Nemecek's lecture yesterday?"

"Nope."

"Oh." She bit her lip.

"But why are you even asking? You went there, you told me as much. That is unless you were really sneaking off to plot with your Free Drones cell." In Katt's estimate, if Electra was really an undercover agent, she was an excellent one. But she was probably just a bog-standard University student. Katt usually tried to recruit a few people for the Data Angels on her trips, but this time everyone seemed lacking. Those with useful skills didn't have the nerve and vice versa. Most had neither. They'd be suitable as pawns, but they were not worth initiating into l33t society.

Most of the students laughed at the joke, but it was anxious laughter. Electra simply looked uncomfortable. "I was there, I just didn't understand it."

"Because you were playing Pokémon on your datapad?"

Electra grimaced. "No, I was trying to pay attention. It's just difficult." She sat down next to Katt. "You should come more often. I think a bit of facetime would be all it would take for the profs to recommend you."

Katt already knew that. It was one of the things she had found out by hacking her profs' comm accounts. "If you're struggling with computing and have such good advice, maybe you should switch to psych." Electra opened her mouth to protest, but Katt continued. "Joking. Can't envision myself rising through the ranks though. Provost Katt just doesn't sound right, does it? Plus, if I did that, when would I find the time to do your homework?" Still, Katt decided that it would probably be a good idea to start showing up for the lectures from now on. Not that she needed the content, but her plan would work better if she attended.

The group laughed again, more relieved this time. They probably found it genuinely funny, but Katt also knew that they knew that it was a good idea to laugh at the jokes of someone whose help could save your ass.

"So what do you want my help with anyway?"

Electra switched to the correct tab of her datapad and started explaining. Katt nodded along. It was easy really, at least for her. But then, she wasn't a star among the Data Angels for nothing. But in a few weeks time she'd start feigning confusion, as a build-up for the grand finale. After all, if it seemed like the star student couldn't cut it, what hope did everyone else have?

She thought about the big plan while explaining the problem and implementing the code for the students. It would be fun to see if she could get them to riot instead of taking Nemecek's test. Maybe one or the other would then discover that they had a spine after all. (Not that it was all that hard a test really, a bit technical, but quite easy if you had time to look out the questions in advance. And looking at the questions merely required breaking into Nemecek's account, which was trivial.)

In contrast, Porygon was just a little amusement on the side. She smiled as she slipped its code onto Electra's datapad along with a sample solution, saying "No sweat", to the profuse thanks. It would start in a few days time, hopefully having clandestinely infected a lot of other machines before then. Perhaps she should have spent a bit longer testing it, but it was time to focus on other projects.

Katt half expected to get caught over Porygon actually. University intelligence was a joke, but they might still trace it back to her via epidemiological analysis. She didn't particularly care, she knew their style. They'd almost certainly simply give her a talking to. Perhaps they'd even congratulate her on the code.

And why would they take more serious action? Porygon was a friendly virus in nice shades of blue and pink. It didn't alter the data or anything like that. The only thing it did was superimpose an image of a slowly rotating Porygon on the screen, always in the foreground. Everyone liked Porygon. But if that annoyed you, it was easy enough to remove. Although for amateur attempts, "remove" meant "be replaced by an image of Porygon-2 with a message announcing that it had evolved".

They'd be less happy if they worked out that she was behind a riot over an exam, but if they ever discovered that, she'd be long gone. Her holiday would be over by then and she'd be off to wreck havoc somewhere else.

oOo

Muk was the property of the University of Planet. It said so on the storage can. Mary couldn't believe she was bored enough to be reading that, but here she was. She leant forward, resting her forehead against her knees.

True, there was better entertainment available on her datapad, but that would require clicking past the "helpful" advice from social psych. Shutting them up had been one of the best things about the Porygon virus. It was a pity it had been fixed eventually.

A bit later, she glanced up to see Muk oozing out of the ventilation shaft. Mary wasn't sure why she'd looked just then. Maybe it had made a noise that she had not really registered. It was more likely that Muk, or to call it its memorable proper name NBS5435NR3978, had signalled to her chip that it was about to appear. Perhaps she had merely caught a stray electronic thought. The task description was "supervision", but it required no human input, leaving her wondering who was supposed to be doing the supervising.

Nevertheless, she smiled as the purplish mass of nanobots slithered down the wall. She also wasn't sure why she felt attached to it. In her game, she had only bothered catching Grimer and levelling it until it evolved to fill up the Pokédex. Muk wasn't aesthetically appealing and it didn't have sophisticated human interaction routines.

Maybe she merely appreciated that it had a purpose: to keep the ventilation system functioning and to recover polluting material for disposal or recycling. (A real Muk would only make things worse of course.) Another possibility was that it simply provided something to look at. Observing its progress across the floor to the storage can certainly seemed to be the most interesting thing to do.

She guessed she'd have to chalk the reason for her affection up as another thing she didn't know. If one listened to the talents, being clueless was the natural state of drones anyway. Well, she'd say the same about them, but while she didn't want to hear their lectures, they were even less inclined to listen to her.

After Muk had deposited its findings it oozed back into the ventilation system, leaving her alone again. Mary sighed and removed a tube of rec drugs from her breast pocket. After giving it a shake to hear the tablets rattle, she started reading its label.

Its effects, elevated mood, relaxation and slight drowsiness sounded quite welcome. The list of possible side effects was long, ranging from light sensitivity to extreme phobic reactions, to psychic contact with the hypothesized planet mind or delusions thereof. She'd taken the stuff before and hadn't experienced anything bad, but wondered if she would now. The nocebo effect was pretty powerful after all.

The warning "Do not use when attention is required, such as when operating machinery" was not a worry though. It was probably not the case among the faction elite, but in her experience, people didn't operate machinery. In the University of Planet, machinery operated people.

And her attention honestly wasn't required. If Muk's electronic synapses were occupied with planning a robot uprising, she wouldn't notice anyway. Even if it did somehow catch her attention, what was she supposed to do? Try and smash it? She grinned. No chance. And if she somehow succeeded, she'd be reprimanded for damaging University property. Perhaps she could throw the storage cannister at it and hope it worked like a Pokéball. Then again, she preferred Muk to the Uni, so if she actually found out about its plans for rebellion, she'd be asking if she could sign up.

She gave the pill tube another shake. It was a pity that fantasies of revolt were probably just something she was dreaming up to pass a dull day rather than the reason she was here. More likely she was supposed to look out for programming irregularities, but she couldn't spot those either. Probably just as well, because she simply knew that if she found anything she'd have to file forms about it.

Besides, she was beginning to suspect that her "job" had nothing to do with Muk at all, but that she was an unwitting subject in a study on extreme boredom.

And she'd had quite enough. Mary unscrewed the tube and rolled one of the tablets onto her palm. After contemplating it for a moment, she swallowed it. Let Muk work and the talents fret, she'd lean back and enjoy the chemical daze.

Perhaps her dreams would take her to Johto, to an outside where the air could be breathed without a mask, to tall grass and to her Pokémon.

THE END


End file.
